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Several different approaches are commonly used to obtain information about the performance of laundry systems, e.g. washing machines. The evaluation of washing performance with soiled test fabrics is commonly done by measuring the reflectance of the washed test specimen. The absolute reflectance readings may be used if the results are only compared within a series of tests using the same batches of test materials for all runs. The inevitable uncertainty of any test results may be reduced if the results can be expressed as ratios compared to the performance of well-known or well-established reference systems tested in parallel. This approach is defined in IEC 60456:2010 and followed globally for assessing the performance of washing machines. With the current evaluation method the calculation of the overall wash performance test result cannot be adjusted to adequately reflect the characteristics of different wash programmes designed for different purposes – or different machine technology and global regions. It is therefore the task of this paper to develop an evaluation method for assessing the cleaning performance of washing machines which is scientifically sound and statistically complete and more flexible in its application to different programmes and/or regions. A new cleaning evaluation method is suggested in this paper and applied to two sets of available data. The new cleaning evaluation method shows to have a number of apparent advantages over the method currently used. As a straightforward approach the stain specific evaluation ensures full usage of generated information including reference machine and batch values to allow calibrating the test result. The full statistical evaluation gives a more complete picture and allows partial results to reflect different aspects of system performance as well as weighting factors allow adjustment to specific requirements.

This study draws on the perceptions and experiences of upper-division students enrolled in writing-intensive (WI) classes in their majors at a large state university. During extended interviews, students reported confidence in dealing with the writing requirements of their majors and predicted success in future job-related writing situations. The primary bases for this confidence are their experiences with a significant number of WI assignments and their ability to engage a variety of resources and use the knowledge thereby obtained. Students particularly valued research-related writing assignments in the major as opportunities for professional skills development and identity building. The authors discuss findings as they relate to the ideologies of writing across the curriculum and writing in the disciplines. The authors argue for greater attention to students' readiness to make connections across assignments, courses, and disciplines; they also suggest greater attention to a field's inquiry methods and strategies for solving problems.

These studies investigated the degree to which prompts and topic types affect the writing performance of college freshmen. The students (N = 3,452) taking the 1989 and 1990 Manoa Writing Placement Examination (MWPE) were required to write in response to two types of topics (for a total of 6,904 essays): one in response to a reading passage and another in response to a question based on personal experience. Ten such prompt sets were used in this study. Study 1 indicated that the MWPE testing procedures were reasonably reliable and consistent across semesters but that student responses to individual prompts and prompt sets were significantly different from each other. Study 2 showed that if two topic types and a large number of prompts are involved, the differences that arise in the performance on prompts or topic types can be minimized by examining the students' mean scores and changing the pairings so that the prompt sets are more equitable in subsequent administrations.

JOHN LOGAN GREETED U S at the front door of the home of Phyllis Thompson, where he was a guest. Logan was in Honolulu for several readings, and to celebrate his being awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. He knows Honolulu well, having recently been Visiting Writer at the University of Hawaii and having begun his teaching career at Honolulu's Iolani School right after the end of World War II. In 1955 the first of his six books of poetry was published. He continues to edit Choice, a magazine of poetry and graphics. As of this writing, he is living and writing in San Francisco, in the neighborhood of most of his nine children.

A writer's evaluation of text plays critical, but little examined, roles in the writer's production of text and development as writer. Twenty students, grades 2-6, ranked unevaluated sets of compositions that they or anonymous peers had written; they then were prompted to discuss the factors upon which their rankings were based. Analysis of their evaluations suggests that bases for evaluations can be described in four categories: feelings aroused by text; responses to surface features; responses to text as understood; responses to craftsmanship.